


Wasting Police Time

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-14
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-08-15 00:35:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8035207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: There has been a series of hoax calls to the police.





	Wasting Police Time

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Sentinel Thursday prompt 'hoax'

Wasting Police Time

by Bluewolf

"What is your emergency?" The professionally calm voice was designed to calm even the most panic-stricken caller.

"I just got home... it's been broken into..."

"What is your name, please?"

"Oh... Marnie Carson."

"And your address?"

"943 Oakwood Drive... please hurry! What my husband will say when he gets home..."

"A police car will be with you as soon as possible, Mrs. Carson. Is your husband likely to blame you for this?"

"Oh... no, no, but so much has been damaged... "

But when the police car arrived at 943 Oakwood, its crew found that the owner was a single man, Harry Atkins; the house had not been burgled and, when questioned, Mr. Atkins had no idea who could have made the hoax call. He had not fallen out with anyone, was on good terms with his neighbors - there was no reason that he could think of why he should have been targeted to have a visit from the police.

"The call wasn't necessarily aimed at you, sir," Officer Durham said. "It could simply have been someone amusing herself by wasting police time."

But it was only the first of several hoax calls to the emergency services; mostly to the police, but there were two to the fire service and one calling an ambulance to an accident where 'my daughter fell down a flight of stairs and I think her leg's broken'. When the ambulance arrived at the stated address, the crew found a single-storey house with no stairs, inhabited by two elderly, unmarried sisters.

That was the incident that dropped the hoax call case onto Simon Banks' lap; the sisters were distantly related to the mayor...

Commissioner Norris was very apologetic when he contacted Simon, but Simon just shook his head. "You know as well as I do, sir - this isn't the first time the mayor has thrown something minor our way."

"Though these hoax calls are becoming more than a minor nuisance," Norris said.

"I know," Simon replied, "but it's not the hoax tying up an emergency vehicle that's bothering him, or the fact that it's one or a series, it's the fact that his second cousins two times removed were inconvenienced by an unnecessary ambulance turning up at their door." He sighed. "If only he didn't insist that 'our best detectives' be assigned to the case."

"I know," Norris agreed. "It would give relatively inexperienced detectives a case to follow that could be tricky but ultimately didn't matter if it went cold. I mean, I'm sure that whoever is responsible is currently enjoying a good laugh at our expense, but will lose interest quite soon when something else catches his - her - attention."

***

Predictably, Simon gave the case to Jim and Blair.

Jim's response was immediate and disgruntled. "The next time there's an election, I'm going to all the meetings and asking if the candidate plans on pushing minor crimes involving his relatives to the front of the line, as 'more important' than - say - serial killers, and recording their 'Oh, I wouldn't dream of doing that' answers, then playing the tape back to them when they do!"

Simon's lips twitched slightly.

Blair, however, was frowning. "Actually, a series of hoax calls like this is potentially quite dangerous," he said. "I don't say that response time would be affected - I doubt anyone would assume that the latest callout could easily be another hoax - but you both know, probably better than I do, how easily the response to a genuine emergency could be delayed while vehicles are tied up answering a hoax call. So assigning someone like Jim to finding the hoaxers makes sense - it's just being done for the wrong reason."

"I know," Jim said. "I do know. I just get annoyed when the mayor gets involved for a minor reason."

"Just how many hoax calls have there been anyway?" Blair asked.

"Ambulance got one," Simon said. "Fire department two. Police... far and away the most, but we'll need to check with dispatch for exactly how many."

There had been eighteen hoax calls to the police. The phone number given by each caller turned out to be that of a pay phone fairly close to the address given for the emergency.

Blair printed out the list and studied it, then called up a map of Cascade. He marked on it all the houses to which cops had been falsely sent, and shook his head.

"Too scattered," he said. "They're all over the city. Geographic profiling isn't going to help us narrow down the perp."

"They're not going to like it, but I think we need to go and speak to the people whose addresses were used," Jim said. He picked up the list and glanced down it.

Blair nodded absently, then lifted his head. "You know - we're thinking that this is something being done just to annoy the emergency services, but what if the link is something to do with the people in those houses?" he asked.

Jim's jaw dropped. "It's possible," he said. "But we seem to have a very wide range of victims. Men and women; young and - well, elderly; I doubt any of them would consider themselves old. Working and retired. I'd suspect a fair range of income, but from a lot of those addresses, probably mostly pretty wealthy."

"There are things that link a surprising range of people," Blair said. "They could all go to the same church - though considering the range of where they live, I'd doubt that was likely. They could all belong to some kind of club - meet on the first Monday of the month to discuss whatever their interest is. They were all on the same cruise ship last summer, whether or not they actually met or spoke to each other. They all drive the same kind of car - possibly, from what you said about them mostly being wealthy, a top of the range one. Hell, they could all have had a speeding ticket at some time."

"So how do we establish if they have something in common?" Jim asked. "Just asking if they know any of the other victims wouldn't work if the link was a speeding ticket."

"I don't know! You're the cop."

"Your suggestion; you should be the one to come up with the necessary questions."

Blair glared at him. "Sometimes I hate you!"

Jim grinned. "But you still love me even when you hate me."

Blair threw his hands up in an exasperated gesture.

***

They headed off for the nearest address that had proved to be a hoax.

"Mrs. Davis? Detective Ellison." Jim flashed his badge.

"Oh God, not again!" she muttered.

Blair stepped forward. "Mrs. Davis, we're investigating the recent hoax calls received by the emergency services."

"Investigating? Calls?"

"You're one of over twenty householders whose address has been used for a hoax call to the emergency services. Whoever is responsible obviously thinks of these calls as a practical joke - but the only person who finds a practical joke funny is the perpetrator. Now, we understand the police were called to your address because of an alleged body in the garden?"

"Yes... but that wasn't the only thing. Two days ago I had a visit from an estate agent - he'd come to price the house because he'd had a call saying that the elderly owner had died and her family wanted to sell the house. Well, it was easy enough to prove that my husband and I were alive and well and far from elderly, but the nuisance, the time it wasted for us - and for him... Oh - he said it was the second time this week he'd been sent to a 'house being put on the market' where the owners said he'd made a mistake, that they weren't planning on selling."

Jim and Blair glanced at each other.

"Which estate agent was it?" Jim asked.

"Oh... Dewar and Allison."

"We'll need to have a word with them, too," Jim said. "You're the first victim we've spoken to, but my partner did wonder if the hoax was being aimed at providing a nuisance for the owners of the houses targeted."

"It was very easy for the owners to prove that the call couldn't have been made by them - for example, an ambulance was sent to a house where 'a child had fallen down the stairs and broken her leg' - there were no stairs in the house. So it's almost as if the hoaxer wants to annoy the householders but at the same time is making it easy to provie it was a hoax," Blair said.

Jim nodded his agreement. "The real problem is that whoever it is is tying up the emergency services and potentially delaying a response to a real emergency."

"Can you tell us... have you had any workmen at the house recently?" Blair asked. "Within the last... oh, three, four months?"

"We had electricians in about three months ago," Mrs. Davis said.

Blair looked at the slightly irritated look on her face.

"Were you satisfied with the work they did?"

"No," she said. "The hall light had been malfunctioning; the 'repair' lasted two days. My husband refused to pay until the job was redone properly."

"And was it?"

"No," she said. "The second 'repair' lasted about five days. My husband told them he wasn't paying, and called in another electrician, wno said the work had been a cobbled job aimed at spending as little as possible while charging us for materials that hadn't been used. He did the job in half the time and it hasn't given us any bother since."

"Which electrician did the botched job?" Blair asked.

"Mansell and Son," she said.

"Thank you. I don't think we'll need to bother you again."

"You think the hoaxer was Mansell? Because we wouldn't pay him?"

"It's possible. Now, we have a few more people to speak to. Thanks again for your help," Jim said.

***

They went on to the next address... and the next... and the next. All had had an unsatisfactory 'repair' done by Mansell and Son. All had refused to pay.

At the fifth house, Mr. Cavendish agreed with the earlier comments, but added, "I've had work done by them before and I was always satisfied - but Jack Mansell retired a few months ago, I think because of ill health, and the business is run now by his son. Jack employed good workers; but I discovered that Bob Mansell had paid off all the 'old' hands and taken on a completely new crew, mostly guys just out of their apprenticeship. Bob always struck me as the kind of man who would take shortcuts if he thought he could get away with it; he knew his dad's employees wouldn't agree to doing slapdash work. I wasn't completely surprised when the repair only lasted a few days.

"It's heart-breaking to see what was a good reliable firm going downhill so fast," Cavendish said.

As they went back to the truck, Jim said, "I think our next visit is to Mansell and Son."

Blair nodded.

***

Bob Mansell folded almost immediately. He tried to bluster for a minute, but faced with Jim's uncompromising stare, he was unable to maintain his defiance.

"They deserved it!" he said "We did the work and they refused to pay!"

"From what we were told, the work was totally substandard. 'Repairs' that lasted less than a week," Jim said unsympathetically. "We could charge you with fraud, charging your customers for work you hadn't done properly. All your customers that we spoke to had to get the work redone by another electrician.

"If you want to stay in business, I suggest you employ some competent workers and accept that you can't take shortcuts. And Mr. Mansell - when we report back to our Captain, you - and your wife? - could well find yourself charged with wasting the time of the emergency services."

He glared at the man once more, then turned and with Blair at his side, walked out.


End file.
